Aftermath by Peter Turnbull Page B

and hands. He sat in front of a half-consumed glass of lager which stood on a circular table that was sticky with spilled alcohol. ‘But they’ll still want to know what you wanted. It’ll be about Veronica.’
    ‘Yes,’ Carmen Pharoah said, ‘yes, it is. We understand that you knew her . . . Veronica Goodwin of Cemetery Road . . . that Veronica . . . just to be certain we are talking about the same person.’
    ‘Yes, I meant her. She’s been found.’ Driver nodded to the television set perched high on the wall in a corner of the room, which at that moment was showing motor racing with the sound turned down. ‘I watched it on the news . . . at home there’s a lot of coverage, can’t miss it . . . not here; here it’s always sports, always with the sound turned down, unless it’s an important football match or something like that.’
    ‘Yes, she was found along with a few other women.’
    ‘I saw that too . . . chained together but died at different times . . . that is weird.’
    ‘But you knew her?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You were prosecuted for assaulting her.’
    ‘No, I wasn’t. You should check more thoroughly. Yes, I have previous for assault but not against her, I was too fly.’ Driver grinned at Ventnor and withdrew his attention from Carmen Pharoah.
    ‘It has been said that you were quite free with your fists.’
    Driver leered. His flesh seemed to the officers to be ingrained with dirt, he wore a baggy tee shirt which also seemed in need of a wash, as did his jeans which were sufficiently faded that they were nearer white in colour than their original blue. His feet were encased in torn red and yellow sports shoes. His nicotine-stained fingers spoke of heavy smoking and his missing front teeth and heavily scarred left jaw line spoke of street violence. ‘It was for her own good.’
    ‘And where have I heard that before?’ Carmen Pharoah said quietly and wearily.
    Driver glared angrily at her once and then forgot her again. His attitude said that he was a man who did not like women in general and he particularly did not like Afro-Caribbean women, and very especially did not like them if they were police officers. ‘It was though, for her own good I mean.’ He gasped and Ventnor received a blast of alcohol laden breath mixed with halitosis.
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Meaning that she had a problem.’
    ‘A problem?’
    Driver flicked his index finger at the glass of lager so that the nail struck it causing a soft ‘ping’. ‘A problem with this.’ Driver shrugged. ‘All right, so I take a drink when I can afford it . . . but with her it was a problem, a real problem.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Yes, a very serious problem. You’ve visited her mother in Cemetery Road?’
    ‘Yes, of course, but she didn’t mention anything about a problem with the booze.’
    ‘She wouldn’t. I mean, she wouldn’t would she, even if it meant finding her killer? She . . . Veronica . . . she was her only daughter. In her eyes she was little Miss Perfect, even if she is just kidding herself on, just to keep the memory of Veronica that she wants to keep, not the memory of who she actually was. But take it from me, pal, she had a problem. She hid it quite well but she had a problem that she could not hide forever. You know, some of the people all of the time . . . and all the people some of the time . . . but she couldn’t hide it from all of the people all of the time, though she tried to.’
    ‘Secret drinking?’
    Driver nodded. ‘Voddy . . . she was one for the vodka. It suited her if she was hiding it from herself as much as other people.’
    ‘No hangover, you mean,’ Ventnor suggested. ‘Is that what you mean?’
    ‘That’s it. Spend the evening drinking red wine or stout and in the morning you feel like your head is being crushed by a steamroller, but spend the night on vodka, you wake up the following morning feeling like you had a dry night. She could get up for work each